Maningrida

Maningrida is on the Central Arnhem coast at the mouth of the Liverpool River. It is 250 km west of Nhulunbuy and 352 km east of Darwin.

Aboriginal people have inhabited this region for more than 40,000 years. The name Maningrida comes from the Kunbidji name Manayingkarírra, which comes from mane djang karirra (the place where the dreaming changed shape). The Maningrida community was established as a government township in the 1940s and as a trading post in the 1950s, when Aboriginal people were trading in crocodile skins and buffalo. The Drysdale family settled at Maningrida in 1956 on land traditionally owned by the Kunbidji people. Maningrida also housed a leprosy treatment centre in the 1960s. In the 1970s Maningrida developed its own Local Government Council, which was absorbed by the West Arnhem Shire Council in 2008.